No more coop smell

[For my girl]

I raise mine on wire outside as soon as they are out of the brooder. I would occasionally have problems with flies - until I realized mine were all coming from the wasted food. I haven't had flies since I put my feeders into plastic pans/bins to catch the spill waste. That and I stopped washing down the area. Fly larvae need food and a moist environment, and I had been giving them both.

 

[Little Jerry Seinfeld]

Greetings Everyone,

This is my first post so I thought I would share one of our best discoveries. We went from 12 quail to 800 birds in less than a year and my wife was complaining, (with good reason) about the smell from the coop. We lived in a residential area and she was worried about the neighbors complaining. We had about 200 birds at the time.
I researched what to do about the smell and with the manure and finally decided on getting a portapod for raising black solder fly larva. I figured it would be a way to dispose on the manure and hopefully the smell. The BSFL needed a base to start them in and they suggested used coffee grounds.
At the time we were using wood shavings to absorb the manure.
I started using coffee grounds instead of shavings to line the pans. Not only did it eliminate the odor, it reduced the number of house flies to almost nothing.
Now for the best part...the coffee grounds are FREE! That's right FREE. I went to a local coffee place (Star Bucks) and asked if I could collect their spent coffee grounds. They were delighted to get rid of them.
So now I have no more smell, an added food sources for the BSFL and quail and my wife is tickled pink because there is no more smell and she gets two star bucks each week. She picks up the spent grounds.
Now that's a win, win, win!

Sorry if this is a dumb question, do you mean you use the grounds for the black soldier flies or for the actual bedding for the quail? i think you mean for the flies but just want to be sure...

 

[Arktos]

We use the spent grounds in the manure pans. When is is time to change them out, we drop them in the black soldier fly larva pod . They are in turn fed to the chickens and quail.